Briber

How dirty offshores work

Most offshore existing in the world are quite legal firms created in order to bypass the inefficiency of strict legislation. For example, the possession of almost all large companies is organized through offshores, the possession of large real estate objects is also - it is much easier to sell shares of an offshore company than to re -register a building or a plot of land. Any large Russian company uses offshore firms to attract funding, to consolidate assets, as well as for many other legal business operations. However, offshores are also used as widely known cosmonaut firms in Russia. They are also called “one -day”, “lanterns”, “garbage dumps”, “paintings”, etc. Typically, their life life does not exceed two years. Offshore, of course, lives longer-many years, but often the meaning of creating an offshore company is the same as the “astronauts”: firstly, the care of taxes, secondly, is a more or less safe channel for transferring bribes for the sides. Using the database of the Central Bank in 1999-2004, I managed to identify about 100 thousand one-day firms through which hundreds of billions of dollars passed. And in 2014, Professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, I published an article*, in which we analyzed how bribes are given through one-day firms.

One -day for the bribe

Collecting bribes through one-day companies is much safer than taking Kesha suitcases. Kesh leaves traces: banknotes can mark, the fact of the transfer of the bribe is fixed. Finally, Kesha's suitcases need to be stored somewhere-these are also risks.

It is much easier when an assistant official simply gives a businessman a piece of paper with the details of the company. Even with a great desire to prove the fact of giving a bribe is almost impossible. Typically, such firms are registered for a homeless person or another front -line person who is not affiliated with either an official or with his family members. Even if the businessman himself subsequently decides to confess and tells about such transactions, it is extremely difficult to prove legally that the beneficiary was an official N, it is extremely difficult. In our article we analyzed 129 regional elections of governors from 1999 to 2004. As a result of this study, it turned out that within one month from the date of election, the turnover of one-day firms increased sharply. Moreover, those firms that have increased the transfer to some one-day firms in the election date, then received state orders. In the most corrupt regions (according to the Transperation International rating), this connection between the receipt of money to the accounts of one-day firms and the subsequent receipt of the state order is especially strong.

Operations in which Roldugin's offshores received money cannot be market transactions under any reasonable conditions

Higher link officials are also used by external companies - offshore companies. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, Western banks are still more reliable. In Russia, everything can be lost both as a result of a change in power and as a result of elementary bankruptcy (an example of this is a recent history of bankruptcy of Zayproombank). Secondly, often the families and real estate of officials are outside Russia-respectively, there it is necessary to accumulate funds for subsequent expenses. Thirdly, the large amounts when transferring from Russia to accounts to other jurisdictions can be monitored by Rosfinmonitoring or can hang somewhere on the border.

The mechanism of functioning of external offshores is about the same as internal one-day firms. The only difference, perhaps, is an external offshore according to the lost documents. Usually some real person is required, who can confirm the current home address (for example, paying for housing and communal services or bank statements). Therefore, offshore, unlike one-day firms, are registered for real persons-friends, acquaintances, lawyers. Almost all offshore jurisdictions offer the service of hiding the final beneficiaries.

"Business" cellist

Judging by the presentation of documents in The Guardian, The Financial Times and in Novaya Gazeta (the researchers do not have access to the documents themselves), the business operations, within which Mr. Roldugin's offshores received money, are fictitious and cannot be market transactions under any reasonable conditions. Let's start with consulting. During 2009-2010, offshores associated with the name Roldugin received consulting contracts as much as $ 30 million. This is a huge amount, given that for such consulting business leaders as McKinsey, Bain, PwC, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and KPMG, a contract for $ 1 million is considered very good. It is easy to calculate that $ 30 million is 100 thousand man-hours (if you take the weighted average rate between partners and ordinary employees $ 300 per hour). If we assume that the consultant worked on this project every full time, then he spent about 2 thousand hours a year on it, and 50 man-years should have gone on the execution of the entire contract. If for two years, Roldugin’s consulting company was only involved in the fact that it advised firms related to the steel business of Mr. Mordashov, whose offshores, according to ICIJ journalists, appear in the documents, then he would need to hire at least 25 consultants. Considering that in each such company there are also accountants, administrators, secretaries and other maintenance staff, we get the total number of employees of the company at least 50 people. The Russian consulting market is very small, and the creation of a similar size of the company could not pass unnoticed, since the only way to quickly create a company in the consulting or investment banking market is to omit people from someone. For example, VTB, when he created his Investbank unit, bought out specialists in Deuteche Bank. Sberbank, when he decided to seriously develop the Investbank direction, bought the company Vardanyan Troika-Dialog, the entire company. You can’t take qualified consultants, like investment batnants. Since the market does not know about the new consulting company created by the cellist Roldugin and, appropriately, about hiring employees there, it is highly likely to say that there was no real consulting contract and $ 30 million were paid for some other purposes.

Office of the Panama Law Firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama City, from where 11.5 million files flowed

Apostalist of debts $ 200 million and 4 billion rubles. for $ 1 for each transaction, debt to $ 6 million and forgiveness of this debt in two months by lender; signing an agreement on the sale of securities with an imminent gap of the agreement and obtaining compensation $ 750 thousand; Obtaining a loan of $ 800 million from the Cyprus daughter of VTB without proper support, a business plan and clearly spelled out return conditions is all transactions whose real purpose does not reflect the formal essence reflected in the contracts.

Brieves or tax care?

But why is it necessary to bribes? Perhaps these offshores on the British Virgin Islands and Panama were created to avoid taxes?

No. The fact is that if a large corporation uses offshores to optimize taxes, then they are usually created for a specific company or group of companies. For example, in the late 1990s-early 2000s, the Sibneft oil company used internal offshores on Chukotka to avoid taxes, Yukos in Mordovia, Lukoil on Baikonur. Tax optimization is an intimate matter. Companies prefer not to advertise him and not to take out the CRU beyond the limits of one holding. It is difficult to imagine that, for example, Sibneft, Yukos and Lukoil used the same offshore to optimize taxes - the scale of their business allowed to organize their own companies for these purposes. It is just as difficult to assume that VTB, Troika-Dialog, the structures of Mordashov, Kerimov and Rottenbergs used the same companies to avoid taxes. They are clearly not included in the same group of companies and the final beneficiaries are different. This means that we can conclude that transferring money to Roldugin's offshore is not tax optimization.

It is highly likely to argue that there was no real consulting contract and $ 30 million were paid for some other purpose

If you exclude tax care, then the only possible explanation of transactions specified in the documents is the payment of bribes. Then the question arises, who in Russia can be a potential briberator of this scale? $ 2 billion is a lot of money comparable to the annual profit of the largest Russian corporations, such as Sberbank, Rosneft, VTB, Alfa-Bank, MTS and Vimpelcom. The period of activities of Roldugin's offshores - from 2006 to 2015 - allows us to exclude many potential candidates. The mayor of Moscow is not suitable. Luzhkov to Sobyanin was replaced in 2010, and the activities of offshores did not stop. The Ministry of Defense is not suitable for similar reasons - Serdyukov to Shoigu was replaced in 2012. By the method of excluding the upper link politicians, it can be assumed that the money that was transferred to Roldugin's offshore companies was intended for Vladimir Putin. That is why in the interests of Putin to conduct the fastest investigation and relieve himself of suspicion.

* (http://www.mironov.fm/research/procurement_jan_25_2014.pdf, published in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, which was analyzed how bribes are given through one -day firms.

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